FS#10373 - Wine patch for ALSA problems in games

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by name withheld (Gullible Jones) - Thursday, 08 May 2008, 06:49 GMT
Last edited by Greg (dolby) - Wednesday, 14 May 2008, 13:11 GMT
Task Type Feature Request
Category Packages: Extra
Status Closed
Assigned To Dale Blount (dale)
Architecture All
Severity Medium
Priority Normal
Reported Version 2007.08-2
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

As the Arch Wiki points out, the Wine ALSA driver is rather glitchy in some games (especially older games in my experience). OSS can be used instead, but OSS is also slow, and likes to hog the sound card (and the hardware accel -> emulation solution doesn't work).

Fortunately there exists a patch for these issues:

http://kcat.strangesoft.net/wine_thread_prio.diff

If this patch doesn't mess Wine up for other applications, and actually works, applying it might not be a bad idea.

(On the other hand, I assume there's a reason the patch hasn't made it upstream?)
This task depends upon

Closed by  Greg (dolby)
Wednesday, 14 May 2008, 13:11 GMT
Reason for closing:  Upstream
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Thursday, 08 May 2008, 08:42 GMT
The reason for not implementing this upstream is because it requires you to run as root or give yourself realtime privileges. Besides that, it only works on linux 2.6.13 and higher.
Comment by name withheld (Gullible Jones) - Thursday, 08 May 2008, 18:30 GMT
Alright, thanks.

Can it work with realtime for users?

(Or could messing with limits.conf make OSS faster? Also, why is OSS still hogging my sound card even when I set hardware accel to "Emulation"?)
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Thursday, 08 May 2008, 21:27 GMT
Using this patch, you can get rid of the glitches by either running as root, or running wine with realtime priority (limits.conf as described in the wiki).
About OSS hogging your soundcard: this is because of the way alsa works. When using OSS emulation in alsa, it will bypass dmix and lock your soundcard in case your card doesn't have hardware mixing.
Comment by Dale Blount (dale) - Friday, 09 May 2008, 19:47 GMT
Wine as root is a no-go for me. Closing as Won't Fix.
Comment by name withheld (Gullible Jones) - Tuesday, 13 May 2008, 16:39 GMT
The patch appears not to require root access, it works with realtime for users. The default audio group settings already allow that.

(Although I may have something wrong. If the patch requires maximum realtime priority, or makes Wine fail when not given such priority, I can definitely see why you wouldn't want it.)
Comment by name withheld (Gullible Jones) - Wednesday, 14 May 2008, 02:04 GMT
On second thought - it might be prudent to wait until Wine 1.0-RC1 is in the repos, and see if it still has trouble with ALSA, before applying this (if that's in the works).
Comment by Greg (dolby) - Wednesday, 14 May 2008, 13:11 GMT
This patch has been rejected upstream over two years ago. If the alsa developers thought the problem was crucial they would have fixed it already. Im sure there would be millions of posts on the wine mailing list & forum. Also for some reason almost all results by google for this patch link to Archlinux.

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